


Carrying

by emkaaaay



Category: The Song of the Lioness - Tamora Pierce, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 04:57:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1076789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emkaaaay/pseuds/emkaaaay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You're not dead," he said, looking.  Some caution softened out of her face. "No," she said.  "We have that in common.  Drink this." -- Jon, newly crowned, and Thayet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Carrying

**Author's Note:**

> "Alanna nodded dumbly. Jon reached for her: there was a flash, and a tiny ball of reddish-purple fire leaped from his fingers to her own bloody ones. Gently he took her hand and kissed it. 'We did it, King's Champion. Tortall is safe.'"
> 
> \- Lioness Rampant

There wasn't much to say after that. Alanna tried for another step and crumpled the rest of the way, but George scooped her up. 

"There now, lass," he murmured. "Time to rest." She turned her face against his chest and wrapped one bloody hand—Mithros, her hands—in his shirt. Jon, propped against the altar, reminded himself that after today it should feel good to be briefly forgotten. 

"Go," he told George. "Healers are in the— well, I suppose you know." 

The thief lord half-smiled at him, sharp eyes kind but strange. 

"Your majesty," he said, and bowed his head. "Long live the king." He turned away before Jon could muster a response, stride still quick, Alanna's hair a flag on his shoulder. 

Sit, Jon thought, and found that he'd done so. Geoffery was dragging off the archers' bodies now. (The picture exploded again across his vision: Liam leaping into the first arrow, the light from the City Doors silhouetting his movements’ perfect arcs.) Raoul was lifting rafters somewhere nearby. In a minute Jon would get up and help. In a minute. The water cup tipped over as he tried to grab it. He leaned back and watched the water sink into dirty stone.

"Your majesty," said a woman's voice, quite close. He opened his eyes, which had apparently closed, and Thayet was crouching in front of him. Her hair draggled halfway down her back. Someone else's blood was smeared across one cheekbone where she'd rubbed it. She'd still been tidy the last time he'd seen her, whirling among his defenders as the shooting began.

"You're not dead," he said, looking.

Some caution softened out of her face. 

"No," she said. "We have that in common. Drink this." 

She'd brought water. She didn't let go of the cup as he drank, which was perhaps a good idea since his hands seemed to be shaking shaking. Water spilled into his beard, and she pulled the cup away.

"Sorry," he said, working to breathe. 

She laughed a little, and he opened his eyes at the strangeness of the sound. 

"It's done," she told him, settling in to sit beside him on the altar's top step. "You did it, all of you. Don't be sorry." Jon noticed the shape of her throat in the Doors' swath of light— it was late afternoon now, and everything was golden. Even snarled, her hair shimmered, and out of habit he imagined what it would feel like in his hands. Then shame hit for noticing while Ironarm lay on the altar like some eldritch sacrifice, while Alanna looked bruised to the soul, while the bodies of his new subjects were dug from heaps of trash. 

"I saw Alanna go down," Thayet said, watching him. "She's with George now?"

Jon nodded, which hurt. "Liam," he rasped. "Thom. Faithful."

She rocked backwards, lips tightening. "Even Faithful— Horse Lords." 

"Her hand scars came open," he said, because what was there to add? “But Baird will help." There went his treacherous eyes again, tracing her for injury. He saw now that the side of her neck was bruised, and a bandage on her left forearm was staining through. 

“You’re hurt,” he said, reaching out with the hand that wasn’t clenched around the Jewel.

“Everyone’s hurt,” Thayet said calmly. “This will wait.”

“Let me—” said Jon, laying his fingers on the bandage and reaching for his Gift, but for the first time in his life he found a bone-dry well. Trying didn’t even hurt— it was like ladling up air instead of water, a feeling so strange that he laughed, hard, pressing his forehead against his knees when he gasped for air.

“You need to rest,” she said. He felt a small hand in his hair, stroking absently along one temple.

"I need to help," he told her, head still on his knees. “I’m—I’m the king now. I’m what they’ve got.” 

“You’re what they’ve got for a long time.” Her voice was firm. “Help tomorrow.”

“I think I used up the seeds,” he said abruptly, eyes squeezed shut. “It was all coming apart, and I reached for more magic, and I think I took it from the seeds. There’ll be—people will starve. We’ll still be reeling from all this, and then come winter people will starve—”

“Jon.” Her fingers, which hadn’t paused in their stroking as he’d talked, went to his cheek and steered him up to meet her gaze. There was no courtesy in her eyes now, only fierceness. She’d never let the courtesy fall with him before. It punched through the fog that had muffled things since he touched the Crown, the Jewel. She opened her mouth and closed it, looking for words. 

“Tyra has grain surpluses,” she said finally. “So does Maren. We can raise taxes on lumber exports, and sell futures on the new port. But that’s beside the—what I mean is that you can’t carry it.” He would have turned his head away, but her hand was stronger than it looked. “My—my mother said you carry people hurting and people hating you and all sorts of unfairness—you have to. That’s what being a Queen is, or a King. It’s all a mess, all the time, and you try to fix things. But what the bad ones do is start thinking the shape of the earth and the hearts of the people are theirs to mold. They aren’t.”

She took a shuddery breath and looked out across the floor, where the last of the injured were being carried out on stretchers. 

“Don’t carry that,” she said, voice even. “Work with what is.”

“She was… wise,” Jon said, wrapping one hand tentatively around the wrist that still held his face. He’d leaned into it without either of them noticing.

She nodded once, chin high.

“And you said ‘we,’” he added, to see the pain on her face dissolve into exasperation. He would remember later that she had blushed. She looked back at him, reserve back in place but eyes warm. 

“The king is delirious,” she told him wryly. She turned to flag Gary down and Jon sank against the altar, gray spots returning to his vision as his focus flagged. “Relax,” she said, low voice a murmur beside him. “We’ll get you home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I welcome reviews of all stripes, especially constructive criticism.
> 
> Disclaimer: The world and characters are the property of Tamora Pierce, to whom I'm grateful for a great deal of fun. No copyright infringement is intended.


End file.
